(first posted 10/21/2016) Welcome to Part 5 of this venture in examining relatively small displacement engines in various trucks and passenger cars. One commonality of the passenger cars scrutinized so far has been the low take rate for these engines with a nod to how engines with around 50% or more displacement were also optionally available. This theme continues with the 1961 and 1962 Mercury full-size cars.
During the late 1950s, when Ford was aiming for a GM-esque five brand structure, Mercury had often been the recipient of its own unique body shell. Mercury had also taken a slight hike upmarket to better make room for Edsel being placed between it and Ford in the brand hierarchy. While the 1959 Mercury seen here had its own unique wheelbase at 126 inches (128 inches for Park Lane), other than some family resemblances, there isn’t a tremendous degree of interchangeability with a 1959 Ford.
After the implosion of Edsel, Ford had taken a shellacking and they needed to fill the hole that was left. Ford’s economic situation, along with paltry sales of the entire Mercury line, was such a unique Mercury body shell was no longer justifiable.
1961 Mercury
1961 Ford
When 1961 rolled around, the full-sized Mercury was little more than a regular 1961 Ford gussied with a bit of visual gingerbread. While the Mercury retained a unique wheelbase for some degree of exclusivity, at 120 inches it was only one inch longer than the Ford.
The various ads boastfully touted Mercury was now priced in the midst of the low-priced field, with comparisons to both Chevrolet and Plymouth. While a wonderful way to slaughter brand prestige, the powers-that-be at Ford Motor Company didn’t see fit to end things there.
In 1961, for the first time in Mercury history, one could get a six-cylinder engine in a full-sized Mercury.
This was the same 135 gross horsepower, 223 cubic inch (3.7 liter) six-banger found under the hood of any common Ford.
Incidentally, the braggadocio by Mercury about their new, low price was entirely accurate. The base price of a 1961 Monterey 600 two-door sedan was $3 cheaper than the base price of a Galaxie two-door sedan that year.
However, to be fair, 1961 was the last year for the full-sized Fairlane at Ford, a trim level one step below the Galaxie.
The existence of a six-cylinder full-sized Mercury continued for 1962. This was the last time such availability existed and a mere 17% of Mercury Montereys were so equipped. This engine was almost as unpopular as a manual transmission (10% take rate) that year; undoubtedly a fair number of these were mated up in the same car.
Mercury died by a thousand cuts. While its brand equity arguably rebounded some for 1963 when the 390 cubic inch (6.4 liter) V8 became standard across the board, instead of simply optional as in 1961 and 1962, the use of the 223 was certainly six of those ultimately fatal cuts.
Mercury was never meant to be a low-priced brand. From its inception in 1939 it was supposed to be a more upscale version of the lowly Ford brand, a bridge to Lincoln. I remember growing up in the ’70s and having the perception that Mercury was a much nicer Ford: Comet, Monarch and even Bobcat being nicer versions of their lowly Ford counterparts, and the Mercury Grand Marquis being much nicer than the Ford LTD, approaching Lincoln territory.
Ford’s mucking about with Mercury and its market position really hurt the brand in the ’60s.
Good points; I’d say the middle position in an automaker’s lineup is always difficult to pull off successfully. It’s hard to avoid the rationale that “this Bobcat’s not that much nicer than a loaded Ford, so why not save a few bucks” and “man, the Mercury’s nice, but if the price is so close to a Lincoln why not splurge a little and get that Town Car?” I’m hard-pressed to think of a brand that pulled it off long-term; Buick is one of the few, really.
Buick is a dead brand walking in the US, although it’s popular in China. It was less popular than Pontiac before the bankruptcy, and it’s less popular now than it was before the bankruptcy. Total Buick sales are about 20 percent of combined B-O-P volume 20 years ago, although GMC makes up for some of that.
I am amazed that 17% of 61 Mercuries came with the six! Not that the 61 was a really successful car, the number I recall having seen in my lifetime is mighty small.
While it is a tangent to your main story, the 59-60 Mercury has always been a fascinating car to me. Not only was it completely different from the 59 Ford, it was completely different from the 57-58 Mercury, which had also been a unique body shell (shared with senior Edsels). FoMoCo really poured money into Mercury like crazy after 1955, and with pretty much zero benefit. The 59-60 big Mercury only sold about 150-155K units annually. Even Studebaker sold over 120K both of those years.
So, it’s easy to see why Mercury had all of the air let out of it for 1961. But I’m not sure I ever knew about the six. That’s pathetic.
My Encyclopedia of American Cars also stated something along the lines of “Mercury and Checker were the only medium-priced brands to offer a six-cylinder in 1961”.
That’s not good company for Mercury when 98.6% of Checker’s had a meter screwed onto the dashboard and lights running out of the roof.
However, I would love to find a six-banger ’61 or ’62 Mercury just for the gag factor of it. Even better if it had a three-speed.
Wow, I had not thought about that. Studebaker eliminated the six in the Hawk for 61 (to the extent that it could still be considered a “medium priced brand”) and only the “low priced” Dodge Dart offered a six – the “regular” Dodge was a V8 only.
Subtracting Comet’s 197k from Mercury’s 1961 production of 317k, the big Mercury only accounted for about 120K units. Pathetic.
No need to subtract Comets; they were not an official Mercury until 1962.
My great uncle had a loaded Mercury Monterey with a big V8 and a 3 speed manual transmission that he bought new. He used it to haul his 28-30 ft trailer(can’t remember the exact size)to Mexico from Oregon every winter and back in the spring. Lets say he said the roads especially in Mexico left a lot to be desired in those days same way with the Mexican gas. When he passed away in ’69 the old Mercury was still chugging away.
Forgot to write 1962 for the year of the car.
When researching this, I found Mercury still offered a three-speed in the full-sizers as late as 1970 or 1971. There was a blurb on one of these years stating the take rate was less than 1%, I believe.
I believe 1970 was the last year for Mercury and 71 was the last year on full size Ford’s. I’ll check my owners manuals when I get home.
In the vast category of “what if” I wonder how things would have gone down if Ford had taken the vast amount of money wasted on Edsel, and instead used it on positioning and marketing Mercury as a legit Buick/Olds competitor (and perhaps, if it could have been made ready, bringing the ’61 Continental to market a year earlier and *really* knocking everyone out.)
But isn’t that what they did with Mercury anyway? Good grief, two new, distinct body shells in a 4 year period, both of them glitzed and glammed up and with plenty of power. I am not sure what else they could have done to make Mercury more successful as a more expensive car.
Mercury had spent its first 20 years perceived as in the Pontiac and Dodge class, just 1 step up from the low priced 3. In 1957 Mercury moved way up market in an effort to make room for Edsel between it and Ford. But Ford moved up market too with the fancy Fairlane 500s.
Not only did Edsel get squeezed out, but Mercury foundered and sank in its new role as an Olds/Buick/Desoto/Chrysler alternative.
The investment was there for Mercury, and for Lincoln as well. But, I’d rephrase Chris’s point that if not for the Distraction of Continental and Edsel, both Mercury and Lincoln might have fared better in the ’57-’64 period – and been that much stronger in ’65 and up.
FoMoCo did effectively downgrade Lincoln to Buick status for a few years, and then created a quite convoluted mid-price mess with Edsel, Mercury, and fancy Fords. If they were worried about a strict hierarchy, they almost could not have done a worse job.
The Mark II, done at Eldorado prices, instead of Brougham prices, would have made a nice halo at Lincoln, and enhanced Lincoln’s brand.
The Mercury probably would have owned all of Mercury’s and Edsel’s volume for the period (which was tough for all “mid-price” brands in ’57-’58), and with a better, more individual product in ’61, they would have been in a better position to benefit from the demise of DeSoto.
By ’65, Lincoln-Mercury was on a roll, but the preceding 10 years were a mighty painful way to get there.
For that matter, what if they had realized early on what could be done within Ford Division, as evidenced by the 4-seat Thunderbird, BEFORE spending all that money to mimic GM’s Sloan ladder with Continental and Edsel?
Unfortunately, for all that money spent on two complete body shells, the ’57-58 was a very loud style that primarily appealed to 12 year old boys, and the ’59-60 only got attractive in the final year.
I agree; of the 4 model years, only the 60 was elegant.
It not only foundered and sank as a Buick-Oldsmobile rival, it alienated its existing clientele, who suddenly found that the cheapest Mercury was bigger and a bunch more expensive than in 1957.
Chis M: They did. In 1969 Ford spent 250 million [what they blew on the Edsel] to take Mercury upscale again and play it’s connection to Lincoln.
I don’t know what they spent in 65 to do something similar, “In The Lincoln Continental Tradition”, but the 69 Mercury was a marked attempt to compete with Olds and Buick, the Marquis the equivalent of the 98 and Electra 225.
Then Ford spent the next few decades again squandering the image they’d tried to build.
Insane.
I’d argue that the effort with the 1969 Marquis – and that effort really began with the 1967 Cougar – worked. The Cougar was widely known, and the Marquis WAS considered to be a step above an LTD in the early and mid-1970s. The plush Colony Park wagons were popular, too.
The problem was that Ford essentially abandoned the effort in the wake of the first fuel crunch. The downsized 1979 Marquis really didn’t come across as a step up from the LTD.
True. Just when you thought Ford finally figured it out they reverse course in less than 4 years. The 73 Marquis wasn’t that much different than the Ford LTD. When I first saw what they had done [again], I was disgusted.
Remember the Marauder X 100 ? A definite upgrade over the common Ford. As was the 69-72 Marquis. All the upgraded differences Mercury would need to shake the glorified Ford image. Even the 71 Cougar retained plenty of premium content over the Mustang.
And then came the Comet, Bobcat, Capri and Monarch clones.
I drove a 69 Colony Park across the country with a friend of the family to go to school in LA. Cruised well at 90 across Wyoming.
The 69 Marauder and the 71 Cougar were new products targeted at dead markets. Ford would have been stupid to persist with that.
Every mid priced car brand went bad in 58 and stayed there for about four years. It wouldn’t have mattered what Ford did with Mercury, so they could have just kept the 250 mil in the bank. The public wasn’t buying cars like that.. The Comet was Mercury’s lifeline.
The sky-blue ’61 ad is perfectly misplaced marketing. Mercurys were popular with well-paid skilled workers. Construction, oil, manufacturing. Unlike the city boy driving the Merc in the ad, those real Merc buyers would recognize the cabin as a guaranteed flood plus landslide. They wouldn’t pay to place their families in a disaster.
In the 1950s and early 1960s, Mercury was dubbed “the blue-collar Buick.”
The ad for the 62 Monterey is equally dumb with the little girl hanging out of the window, trying to retrieve her doll. Ford actually paid someone to come up with this!
Well yes, but when you consider that the Ford taxi ad has the cabbie driving his pax straight onto the apron of an airport, you might be inclined to grant the artist some slack. He was obviously not a well man.
What’s wrong with the ad? The pics are a Rockwell-esque slice of family life typical of that period. There’s nothing wrong with it for me.
Semi-relevant: An ad for movie equipment that I just noticed in an old electronics magazine. This ad captures the real Mercury spirit far better than the 1961 ad, though the terminology is peculiar. (I know Edsel had originally planned to call the car the Ford-Mercury, but I’m pretty sure it was just plain Mercury by 1951. Or did some people still call it the Ford-Mercury?)
In the last pic, that ’62 4-Dr is wearing wheel covers from a 67-8 cougar (sim to the 69-70 XR-7 wheel covers.)
Thanks! I wrote this car up in 2012 ( https://www.curbsideclassic.com/curbside-classics-american/curbside-classic-1962-mercury-monterey-no-respect/ ) and knew that those wheelcovers were wrong, but couldn’t place where I had seen them. Now I see it.
Jason, you mention a 5 brand strategy. I can think of Ford, Lincoln, Mercury and Edsel, but that’s four. Or did you mean that Ford was aiming for 5, though still only at 4? Is there any evidence of a 5th brand in planning or future strategy? Though in today’s context, one would say that GM in fact had 6: Chevy, BOP, Cadillac and GMC. By the way, it was interesting to read that Mercury went from one extreme, offering sixes, to the other, 390 i.e. big-block only.
Continental Division. Don’t forget the Mark II was *not* a Lincoln.
In the Mid 1950s “Continental” was considered a separate marque from “Lincoln”. That’s the fifth car brand in FoMoCo’s scheme.
I don’t think the Ford Divisions lined up neatly with the GM counterparts. I think they tried to make Edsel do double duty, with the smaller Ford-body Edsels going up against Pontiac and Dodge and the bigger Mercury body Edsels going into Olds/Desoto territory. I think Mercury was to straddle the Olds/Buick range. Lincoln was, of course, squared up with Cadillac.
Other than Ford division, none of these competed well at all.
By the way, I think the ’61 Ford ad (not the Fairlane one) is stunning in every way: both the graphic design – layout, font, colors, renderings of the car – and the car itself as well. In my opinion the odd years of the early-mid 1960’s, ’61, ’63’ and ’65, were high points for Ford styling, and the ’62 and ’64 regressed.
That 61 Ford won an Industrial Design award in Italy that year.
Your last point has been mentioned before, almost as though there were A- and B-teams corresponding to the odd and even years, and yes, the odd-year models were better styled.
Great artwork here, and although it’s unrelated to the topic, I love the ’59 Mercury pictured. The dashboard on the ’59 was one of the high (or low, depending on your perspective) points of fifties rocketry. There aren’t many left, but it’s a treat when one pops up at a car show.
Nice, you know I’d love to have a Mercury with a six banger. Here’s one now:
http://www.kijiji.ca/v-classic-cars/oshawa-durham-region/1961-meteor-montcalm/1191514634?enableSearchNavigationFlag=true
Although it’s an oddball Canadian market Montcalm. Luckily the $8,500 ask will keep me away..
It seems like I found something saying a six-banger was available through 1964 in the full-sized Meteor in Canada. Too bad there is no underhood picture of this Meteor.
Also, Googling “Mercury 223 six” nets one a bunch of Canada market Mercury pickups. Confusion is delightful sometimes.
Funny you should mention this. I almost bought a well optioned Canadian-spec 1965 Mercury with a 6 cyl. This was back in 1990. The seller wanted $500 and had no takers. Foolishly I turned it down. The car was so clean and pristine, it was worth 4 times that.
But I was a foolish V8-obsessed kid unwilling to take anything less than a 390.
As a 6 cyl it was a rare beast.
Funny, how few people consider the scarcity in any given market for the REAL rarities. (Not putting you down, mind you: everyone wants the models that sold the best when they were made, it’s human nature.) I remember reading in one of the Big3 auto enthusiast mags of the 1970s here in the USA about how few 1965-68 Mustangs left the factory with bench seats, 6cyl engines and 3spd manual transmissions as opposed to a 4spd. Everybody was going for the 260/289 V8 with auto or 4spd. Well, not two months later a gent in the next town over from where I lived was selling a mint 1966 Mustang coupe he had bought for his daughter as a graduation present. She didn’t like the six, hated driving a standard in the hills of north-central Mass. and thought a bench seat wasn’t cool. I was only 22 but never had seen nor heard of a Mustang equipped like a family sedan! The clincher for me was, it was a three-on-the-tree – not a three-on-the-floor. Not one redeeming cool feature to be had in this car to a high-school grad, and after eleven years it only had 28,000 miles on the clock. I got it from the man for $375 cash, down from the $500 he was asking for it. It was as if it had just driven off the showroom floor. A year later, I sold it at a Mustang/Cougar meet for $6000 and bought a 1965 Ambassador convertible with part of the money. Not a bad investment! 🙂
I have never seen or even heard of a column-shift Mustang!
No Mustang or pre ’74 Cougar EVER had a column shift of any kind, to this day. Interestingly , GM, Mopar and AMC pony cars DID have them available, both 3-spd manual and autos.
Jason, the ad says that this fancy “Silvery Anniversary” ’64 Meteor *wasn’t* available with the six, so I’ll guess that to mean that the lower-trim models _were_:
And here’s the ’65 (aren’t those ’65 LTD wheelcovers, BTW?):
I guess the 223 in a Mercury wouldn’t be any worse than the 200 in a 68 Montego that someone has. It was written about in one of my mag’s a few years ago. And as a side note, beginning late in 74 production Ford reintroduced the 250 in the Torino. Available only in base and Grand 2dr’s and only with automatic. And they charged. $137 for the privilege! BUT as a six fan I’d take any of ’em. But only with manual! As far as Mercury being cheaper than Ford one year, this isn’t exactly the same, but in 75 only a Comet was $17 cheaper than a Maverick if they were comparely equipped. You see in 75 the Comet’s base interior was the Maverick’s $83 Interior Decor Group. So a Maverick with that option was $17 more expensive than the base Comet that included it “At No Extra Charge”!
How about a slant six in a…C body Fury! Bizarrely, the car was otherwise loaded to the roof with options.
Dang, I forgot about those but you are right. My dad had a 1971 Fury II for a company car (1971-73) and he grumbled every day about it only having a six in it (the 225 Slant Six, as I remember). I never saw a car so big with an engine so small. You had to look for it once the hood was opened! While it would do well enough around town and – once it got up to speed – on the interstate, passing cars was out of the question and it worked so hard most of the time hauling all that bulk around, gas mileage was pitiful…in the 13/14mpg range.
Dad never chanced getting another Mopar. In 1973 he went for a Galaxie 500 with, I believe, a 302 V8 in it and air conditioning. That car was much more roadworthy.
That was the weird part…aside from the engine, the car was loaded! Power windows & locks,tilt column, cruise control, power disc brakes, AC, power seat, AM-FM cassette, even the rear defroster!
For some reason in the late 60’s my father went on an economy kick. We ended up with a 1968 Mercury Montego with the 250-6 and the FMX trans. Even though my part of Northeastern Ohio is kinda hilly, it was sufficient. It was only when we went to visit my sister in Eastern Pennsylvania that the six’s lack of power was noticeable. Loaded with five people and all the luggage for a week’s stay, the old 250 was hard pressed to cross the mountains on I-80. Frequently we occupied the far right lane on the uphill stretches because we were going only as fast as the fully loaded trucks. My mother hated that car with a passion.
In 1972 Dad doubled down and bought a 1972 Mercury Montego with the same 250-6 and FMX combination. Mom really liked that car- not! However, while the ’68 was a good car with virtually no problems, the ’72 was a pile. I can remember him complaining about the way the dash was installed, very noisy. We found out later on, a number of the fasteners had not been installed and that it was in danger of separating from the rest of the body. I think the ’72 body was even heavier and the engine was strangled by emissions controls, so the car was a slug. My dad never kept a car beyond 50-60K miles or much over three years. However, this particular car started burning oil at a huge rate, seemingly overnight.
This car was such a pile, he dumped it for a 1974 Mercury Montego (which had the same issue with the dashboard!). He thought he was going to be clever and get a V8 in this car, but it all fell apart when the 302 was as much of a dog as the 250 in the ’72 model was. On top of it all, the 1974 body had the huge battering ram bumpers to add even MORE weight to an underpowered and strangled engine.
My dad bought a 74 Montego on May 11th 1974. It was my mother’s mother’s day gift. She drove it 5 days a week until she retired in 2000. I got it in 03. We didn’t have any problems with ours. It still doesn’t have any rattles. Although I have to admit the body has deteriorated in the last three or four years. But I’ll never get rid of it. It has the 351w/FMX combo.
Fun coincidence: My father bought the 1974 Montego as a Mother’s Day gift for my mother also! It was lipstick red with a black vinyl roof and a black cloth interior. Glad to see you still have it and cherish it.
I think by “peak smog”, i.e., the mid 1970’s, cubic inches were your friend. I think my family’s experience with our last Montego would have been better if it had been a 351. The 302 just struggled to pull all of that weight around.
Here’s the Marti Report on ours.
Wow, Racing Mirrors?
Very interesting read! I had never focused on the fact that Mercury offered a 6-cylinder during this time period, and it’s amazing that they sold as many as they did.
Looking at the ’61 cars, it’s a wonder Mercury even survived as a separate marque. I give FoMoCo credit though, they did start reinvesting in Mercury, and certainly by the late 1960s the brand was far more credible as an upper-middle entry, thanks especially to the Cougar and Marquis lines.
When I was growing up, I was always under the assumption that Mercury was below Ford, in terms of prestige. And in the pre-internet days when there was nobody there to necessarily point out that Mercury was the mid level brand, I had no idea for a good portion of my life. Lincoln, I knew was higher than Ford, but I think that the misconception of potential car buyers came from this sort of confusion. I think that the problem that arose, was that Ford had their flagship big brand name cars like the Thunderbird and Mustang, which were prestigious enough (even with a Ford name) that they had trumped anything in the Mercury lineup. It’s as though a Mercury had a problem with being the “mid child”……they were not allowed to overachieve like big brother Lincoln, nor were they allowed to have the sort of longer leash with the attainable, charming recklessness that the Mustang or the T-Bird (or a 428 Cobra Jet/ Mach 1 etc) may have in being able to get away with being less responsible as the little brother. That left Mercury with no real identity in the family, and though I really like many cars in Mercury’s lineup (especially the early Cougars and the wide range of engines that you could get in an XR7), it’s amazing to me that they didn’t get the axe by the mid 60’s or mid 70’s (at the latest).
Ford’s effort to reposition Mercury in the early 1960s is similar to what Chrysler did with Dodge during the same time period. In the case of Dodge, the corporate parent took Plymouth franchises away from Dodge dealers for the 1960 model year, and gave them the full-size Dodge Dart as a replacement. The “real” full-size Dodges were named Polara and Matador, and continued for 1960.
There are even ads for the 1960 Dart that urge buyers to compare it to “Car C,” “Car F” and “Car P” – or Plymouth! At least the Mercury ads didn’t directly compare the car to Ford!
While Ford’s effort to reposition the full-size Mercury was largely a flop – the Comet, which wasn’t badged as a Mercury for 1960 and 1961, kept dealers afloat in the early 1960s – Chrysler did temporarily succeed with the Dodge Dart. The problem was that the Dart dealt a serious blow to Plymouth, while effectively turning Dodge into another low-price brand. The “real” Dodges quickly became a sideshow to both dealers and buyers, which was further aggravated by the wacky 1961 styling.
Dodge would henceforth be a direct competitor to Plymouth, as a opposed to a step up from the Mayflower brand. By the mid-1970s, Plymouth was an also-ran brand, and Dodge wasn’t much stronger. That was a far cry from Plymouth’s former status as the perennial holder of the number-three or number-four slot in total sales.
At least Ford’s effort to promote low-price, full-size Mercurys didn’t fatally damage the Ford brand in the long run.
Love the pictures. The 61 Mercury is one of my all time full size favorites. Make mine the Meteor six ! The others in my ultimate dream garage would be Mercury’s 60, 65, 66 and 67 offerings. [Along with my dream 60-61 Comet. {I know, not officially a Mercury until 1962} ].
I wouldn’t turn my nose up at a Grand Monarch or 71 Mercury Monterey, though.
From ’60 to ’64, with the possible exception of ’62, the Galaxie was the better looking car. I still gag when I see that ugly ’63-’64 reverse C pillar with the lowering back glass design Mercury went with. The Lincoln family look Mercury went with in ’65 was a huge improvement.
The ’63 and ’64 Galaxie were so much better looking than the beat with a ugly stick Mercury counterparts.
It’s hard to imagine anyone going for a 6 cyl 3 on tree or even automatic with a big Mercury although I could see a few fleet and cab versions being ordered in ’62 when the Fairlane went away if there was no difference in price between this and a stripper Galaxie.
Our family had a well equipped ’62 Monterey 2 door with buckets, floor shifter automatic 390 bought used but still looking like new in 1970. The factory under dash AC unit which didn’t go away until ’65 was the one thing I thought Ford hung on to way too long. The ’62 we had was a good looking and good running, powerful, comfortable car, and it’s beige exterior and 2 tone brown and beige interior with lots of chrome and stainless steel looked great.
It seemed to be so much better built that the troublesome ’67 Monterey pea green in and out 4 door that was bought a couple of years later to replace the ’62. Mom was not happy when Dad traded her perfect condition Monterey on this car. It had no power from the day he brought it home, how could he not notice during the test drive. The first time we tried climbing the Grapevine it crawled up the hill, pinging like crazy, and lots of unnecessary money was spent on it, as in transmission replacement and valve job which made it run no better. Finally the real problem was figured out, and all it turned out to be was a muffler that collapsed internally creating huge backpressure.
That must have been a 62 Monterey S-55 – a cool car, as a kid I loved those jet-tube taillights, somewhat similar to the 62 Imperial. The comparable Comet with bucket seats was the S-22 and the Meteor the S-33, a precursor of similar model designations today.
Appears you are correct, CA guy. Info is sparse on the internet but I remember it having the same type front fender badging as in the ad you posted, and it appears buckets, center console and floor automatic shifter were S-55 only. The wheelcovers were also the same, except as I recall the tri-color badge may have had had the cars beige color instead of red on it. The car was even more special than I realized, only 2772 S-55 hardtops were built in 1962. It did have the 390 4 bbl, only question is if it was the 300 or 330HP version. It did have factory dual exhaust.
The ’62 Galaxie Mainliner Taxicab ad appears to be ahead of its time. Look at the sketch of the jet airplane in the background in the ad. It appears to be a Boeing 737, which did not first fly until 1967, a full 5 years later.
The downgrading of the 1961 Mercury to a mere “fancy Ford” and even including the same drivetrains found in Fords served two purposes. 1. To downgrade Mercury back to the low-medium market left vacant with the demise of the Edsel. 2. A last-ditch effort to breathe new life into sagging Mercury sales in the late 1950s that led then-FoMoCo president Robert MacNamara to recommend discontinuing the Mercury brand after 1960 – along with the Lincoln, which was saved thanks to the all-new 1961 Continental. The ’61 Merc on the Ford body was probably approved by Mac to give the Mercury brand two years to improve saleswise – or become curtains – one of the reasons Lincoln-Mercury dealers were also given the Comet (originally planned as an Edsel) to sell in mid-1960, itself a stretched Falcon. But it was the Comet that kept Mercury alive during this period as buyers didn’t take kindly to the cheapening of the big Mercury – and took their business to Pontiac, Oldsmobile and Chrysler-brand dealers. Had MacNamara’s plan to reorganized Ford Motor Company in 1959 gone through in the early 1960s, the car lineup would have consisted of all Ford Division vehicles by 1963 including the luxurious Thunderbird, mid-sized Fairlane, compact Falcon and subcompact Cardinal – along with Ford trucks. And the big Ford Galaxie might have been discontinued along with the entire Mercury lineup – making Ford more like VW or AMC in emphasizing almost nothing but small cars. Luckily, MacNamara left FoMoCo in late 1960 to go to the Pentagon and none of his “nonsense” to bring Dearborn back to its senses after the colossal failures of the Continental Mark II and Edsel of the late 1950s would be realized. New leadership in Dearborn would continue selling the big Ford against the industry-leading full-sized Chevrolet (though Chrysler would trott out downsized Dodges and Plymouths for 1962 that were the same size as the Fairlane), the Mercury would return to its traditional role as a true medium-priced car to challenge Pontiac, Oldsmobile and Buick at GM, and Chrysler’s signature brand with, first, the standardization of the big 390 V8 in 1963 and reintroduction of the higher-priced Montclair and Park Lane lines in 1964. And Lincoln would also come out of its late 50s doldrums as Continental sales rose to the 40,000-50,000 range. And then came 1964 and Ford’s most successful debut of a new car and market segment – the Mustang. None of that would have happened under a MacNamara-run Ford Motor Company.
It would’ve put GM in a bind too – they’d have the only “real full-size” cars on the market, a ready-made sales landslide without lifting a finger, but would’ve had to choke back on them lest their market share tick enough over 50% to ring down the Sherman Act on them.
GM had also considered dropping Pontiac and Buick in the late 1950s due to sagging sales during the 1958 recesssion – which would have left Oldsmobile as their only mid-priced brand. MacNamara probably heard rumors of this while reviewing the disappointing sales of Edsel, Mercury and Lincoln. Luckily the 1959 Wide-Track Pontiac brought a sales rebound and rose all the way to third place by 1962 though Buick was a bit slower to recover from the ’58 recession but finally did around 1961-62 as did Mercury in the same timeframe after finally beginning to regain its old identity in 1963. Had both GM and Ford dropped most of their mid-priced brands, the sole survivors in this field would have been Olds and Chrysler’s signature brand, as DeSoto was gone by early 1961 and Dodge had essentially become little more than a jollied-up Plymouth.
I have often wondered how Ford would have turned out if McNamara had been given the helm for a few years.
Couldn’t it just have been that Mercury had a certain buyer in mind for the six. Perhaps a traveling salesman who values the more upscale interior, extra comfort option availability, and the stature of a brand not of the low priced three. This person could still be paying his own gas and covering a lot of highway miles. An economical, but trusty, and under stressed six combined with a big full size gas tank could be a big draw.
Mercury made sense when introduced, a Ford was $600 and a Lincoln was $1000.00s, but over the decades Lincolns became much more affordable–Mercury should have been axed with the Edsel.
How many years did Merc. build the Turnpike Cruiser ? I’m thinkin 1957 & 58 ?
Very collectable now I’d say, have only seen a handful over the years……..
Why did FoMoCo even bother to tool up different rear quarters for the 1961 Mercury? The only real difference is the angle of the vestigital tailfin!
The next year, they DID differentiate them. So maybe they weren’t ready after all.
Though I’ve head it wasn’t popular, the ’60 full-size Ford is one of my favorites. with lots of style but still a real break from the late ’50s cars. OTOH, the ’60 full-size Mercury, with it’s ‘dogleg’ windshield, and other styling cliches, looks very definitely stuck in the late ’50s. It’s almost as if Ford was stuck with leftover tooling from the defunct ’59 Edsel and used it to crank out the ’60 Mercury.
Happy Motoring, Mark
“1961 Mercury – The Better Low-Priced Cars” Better than what? The implication being the ’61 Fords on which the ’61 Mercurys were so clearly based weren’t quite as good as advertised. What an idiotic thing McNamara did to Mercury before he went to wreak havoc on the military. Notwithstanding the four-seat Thunderbird, Falcon and ’61 Lincoln, he was living proof that a bean-counter was the worst person to lead a car company.
Mercury, as well as most of the major medium-priced players, had experienced generally ascendant sales in that first postwar decade, cresting for 1955 at 400K+ units. Naturally, this affectively mislead management to think they’d found the magic formula to further success. Subsequently, unique-to-Mercury plus Edsel body programs were aimed at furthering that trajectory. The M-E body programs for the 1957-’58 Mercurys and upper-series ’58 Edsels and successor 1959-’60 Mercurys plus the still-born M-E-bodied ’59 Edsels made sense based on the Olds-Buick body-sharing model. Had the market supported it, the move would now be considered a brilliant strategy.
What was conspicuously absent from Ford’s overall product planning aimed at making Edsel-Mercury-Lincoln directly competitive versus Olds-Buick-Cadillac and so key to the GM success, was a shared C-body for upper series Mercurys and Lincolns. For two car brands under the same Lincoln-Mercury Division umbrella , their totally unrelated products could have come from completely separate companies. It was as if no one from one side ever coordinated any product planning with the other. If, at the time of the planning for ’58 Lincoln, practicing the Olds-Buick-Cadillac model, the Park Lane along with Lincoln Capri and Premieres would have shared a common body shell. That could have also happened for 1959 when Edsel Citation, Mercury Park Lane and Lincoln Capri/Premiere would all shared that large new shell. Small wonder when the M-E-L Division racked up major losses was McNamara eyeing them as candidates to scuddle…..that’s what bean-counters do.
Better would have been to salvage the ’59-’60 Mercury 128 inch wheelbase body-on-frame platform for the ’61 Lincoln in conjunction with a continued large 126 inch wheelbase ’61 Montclairs and Park Lanes, joined by the Ford-bodied Meteor 800 and Monterey to round out the line-up. As far as the ’61 Meteor 600: forget that silly idea after every one in product planning had a good laugh at the suggestion of a six cylinder Mercury.
As Geeber correctly notes, the McNamara solution to the Mercury’s lackluster performance was to mimic the Mopar move creating another low-priced competitor in the ’60 Dodge Dart. It placated Dodge dealers short-term but crippled Plymouth and full-sized Dodges long-term. When the ’61 Mercury down-sizing failed to produce the intended revival of sales, fortuituously for Mercury McNamara was gone or it definitely would have been too. Contrast all this market position fiddling with Pontiac as it steady built its strengthening position to third in sales. Ford might well have done for the same for Mercury if management wasn’t so willing to retrench it in the face of a temporary downturn. Thankfully, the lowly Comet kept Mercury dealers alive until 1965 when they could again proudly promote their cars as worthy of medium-priced customer consideration.
ooh, “standard front arm rests.” Well, that seals the deal!
In 1964 my city got new cop cars – Full size Merc with 6 cylinder standards
I have a theory about this. It’s probably really sexist, but so were the times.
In 1961, a well-off fellow bought a neat new Lincoln hardtop. In the process he and the (good) salesman developed a bond and a good working relationship.
Now it’s 1962 and the man’s wife needed a new car to do what wives did in those days – grocery shopping, take the kids to school, etc. Instead of going to a Ford dealership, he stops in to see his pal at the L-M dealership. That good salesman offers the fellow a Mercury six at a deal that’s even better than what he would have gotten at the Ford store, and the fellow makes the smart move. After all, the I-6 was just fine for puttering around town.
Chicago area was a successful ‘mid priced brand’ market. My parents, grandparents and their peers looked to Buick/Olds for ‘good cars’, thinking of Ford/Chevy as ‘cheap’.
Mercury brand did fairly well with Cougars, both the 60’s Pony version and the 74-79 PLC. Grand Marquis did well when B-O dropped RWD full sized cars in 80’s. And Comets, too.
As time went on, import makes then took the role of ‘good cars’, and Olds faded. Buick is on fumes now. Ford trucks and SUV’s in higher trim, are now ‘mid-lux’ status symbols.
Part of what killed the multiple brand thing was the idea of selling the same car with different option packages, partly government regulations making most cars approximately the same size, partly the “world car” thing which drastically limited the differences in cars nationally, and the cultural shift away from defining people by what they drove in normie culture. Also brands don’t mean what they used to.
Until I saw this I had no idea the ’61 Merc was so similar visually to the ’61 Ford. And I even had a ’61 Ford, but not until the mid 70s by which time nearly all of the 61’s were gone. But wow, they were almost identical.